DRAFT 1 -- A Work in Progress
Introduction
Here's an idea I've been thinking about: it's a concept for a new
philosophy, or perhaps just a name for a grassroots philosophy that
seems to be emerging on its own. It's called "Nowism." The view that
now is what's most important, because now is where one's life actually
happens.
Certainly we have all heard terms like Ram Das' famous, "Be here
now" and we may be familiar with the writings of Eckhart Tolle and his
"Power of Now" and others. In addition there was the "Me generation"
and the more recent idea of "living in the now." On the Web there is
also now a growing shift towards real-time, what I call the Stream.
These are all examples of the emergence of this trend. But I think
these are just the beginnings of this movement -- a movement towards a
subtle but major shift in the orientation of our civilization's
collective attention. This is a shift towards the now, in every
dimension of our lives. Our personal lives, professional lives, in
business, in government, in technology, and even in religion and
spirituality.
I have a hypothesis that this philosophy -- this worldview that the
"now" is more important than the past or the future, may come to
characterize this new century we are embarking on. If this is true,
then it will have profound effects on the direction we go in as a
civilization.
It does appear that the world is becoming increasingly now-oriented;
more real-time, high-resolution, high-bandwidth. The present moment,
the now, is getting increasingly flooded with fast-moving and
information-rich streams of content and communication.
As this happens we are increasingly focusing our energy on keeping
up with, managing, and making sense of, the now. The now is also
effectively getting shorter -- in that more happens in less time,
making the basic clockrate of the now effectively faster. I've written
about this elsewhere.
Given that the shift to a civilization that is obsessively focused
on the now is occurring, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether this
will gradually penetrate into the underlying metaphors and worldviews
of coming generations, and how it might manifest as differences from
our present-day mindsets.
How might people who live more in the now differ from those who paid
more attention to the past, or the future? For example, I would assert
that the world in and before the 19th century was focused more on the
past than the now or the future. The 20th century was characterized by
a shift to focus more on the future than the past or the now. The 21st
century will be characterized by a shift in focus onto the now, and
away from the past and the future.
How might people who live more in the now think about themselves and
the world in coming decades. What are the implications for consumers,
marketers, strategists, policymakers, educators?
With this in mind, I've attempted to write up what I believe might
be the start of a summary of what this emerging worldview of "Nowism"
might be like.
It has implications on several levels: social, economic, political, and spiritual.
Nowism Defined
Like Buddhism, Taoism, and other "isms," Nowism is a view on the
nature of reality, with implications for how to live one's life and how
to interpret and relate to the world and other people.
Simply put: Nowism is the philosophy that the span of experience
called "now" is fundamental. In other words there is nothing other than
now. Life happens in the now. The now is what matters most.
Nowism does not claim to be mutually exclusive with any other
religion. It merely claims that all other religions are contained
within it's scope -- they, like everything else, take place exclusively
within the now, not outside it. In that respect the now, in its actual
nature, is fundamentally greater than any other conceivable
philosophical or religious system, including even Nowism itself.
Risks of Unawakened Nowism
Nowism is in some ways potentially short-sighted in that there is
less emphasis on planning for the future and correspondingly more
emphasis on living the present as fully as possible. Instead of making
decisions with their effects in the future foremost in mind, the focus
is on making the optimal immediate decisions in the context of the
present. However, what is optimal in the present may not be optimal
over longer spans of time and space.
What may be optimal in the now of a particular individual may not at
all be optimal in the nows of other individuals. Nowism can therefore
lead to extremely selfish behavior that actually harms others, or it
can lead to extremely generous behavior on a scale that far transcends
the individual, if one strives to widen their own experience of the now
sufficiently.
Very few individuals will ever do the necessary work to develop
themselves to the point where their actual experience of now is
dramatically wider than average. It is however possible to do this,
while quite rare. Such individuals are capable of living exclusively in
the now while still always acting with the long-term benefit of both themselves all other beings in mind.
The vast majority of people however will tend towards a more limited
and destructive form of Nowism, in which they get lost in deeper forms
of consumerism, content and media immersion, hedonism, and
conceptualization. Rather than being freed by the now, they will be
increasingly imprisoned by it.
This lower form of Nowism -- what might be called unawakened Nowism
-- is characterized by an intense focus on immediate
self-gratification, without concern or a sense of responsibility for
the consequences of one's actions on oneself or others in the future.
This kind of living in the moment, while potentially extremely fun,
tends to end badly for most people. Fortunately most people outgrow
this tendency towards extremely unawakened Nowism after graduating
college and/or entering the workforce.
Abandoning extremely unawakened Nowist lifestyles doesn't
necessarily result in one realizing any form of awakened Nowism. One
might simply remain in a kind of dormant state, sleepwalking through
life, not really living fully in the present, not fully experiencing
the present in all its potential. To reach this level of higher Nowism,
or advanced Nowism, one must either have a direct spontaneous
experience of awakening to the deeper qualities of the now, or one must
study, practice and work with teachers and friends who can help them to
reach such a direct experience of the now.
Benefits of Awakened Nowism: Spiritual and Metaphysical Implications of Nowist Philosophy
In the 21st Century, I believe Nowism may actually become an
emerging movement. With it there will come a new conception of the
self, and of the divine. The self will be realized to be simultaneously
more empty and much vaster than was previously thought. The divine will
be understood more directly and with less conceptualization. More
people will have spiritual realization this way, because in this more
direct approach there is less conceptual material to get caught up in.
The experience of now is simply left as it is -- as direct and
unmediated, unfettered, and unadulterated as possible.
This is a new kind of spirituality perhaps. One in which there is
less personification of the divine, and less use of the concept of a
personified deity as an excuse or justification for various worldy
actions (like wars and laws, for example).
Concepts about the nature of divinity have been used by humans for
millenia as tools for various good and bad purposes. But in Nowism,
these concepts are completely abandoned. This also means abandoning the
notion that there is or is not a divine nature at the core of reality,
and each one of us. Nowists do not get caught up in such unresolvable
debates. However, at the same time, Nowists do strive for a direct
realization of the now -- one that is as unmediated and nonconceptual
as possible -- and that direct realization is considered to BE the
divine nature itself.
Nowism does not assert that nothing exists or that nothing matters.
Such views are nihilism not Nowism. Nowism does not assert that what
happens is caused or uncaused -- such views are those of the
materialists and the idealists, not Nowism. Instead Nowism asserts the
principles of dependent origination, in which cause-and-effect appears
to take place, even though it is an illusory process and does not truly
exist. On the basis of a relative-level cause-effect process, an
ethical system can be founded which seeks to optimize happiness and
minimize unhappiness for the greatest number of beings, by adjusting
ones actions so as to create causes that lead to increasingly happy
effects for oneself and others, increasingly often. Thus the view of
Nowism does not lead to hedonism -- in fact, anyone who makes a careful
study of the now will reach the conclusion that cause and effect
operates unfailingly and therefore is a key tool for optimizing
happiness in the now.
Advanced Nowists don't ignore cause-and-effect, in fact quite the
contrary: they pay increasingly close attention to cuase-and-effect and
their particular actions. The natural result is that they begin to live
a life that is both happier and that leads to more happiness for all
other beings -- at least this is the goal and example of the best-case.
The fact that cause-and-effect is in operation, even though it is not
fundamentally real, is the root of Nowist ethics. It is precisely the
same as the Buddhist conception of the identity of emptiness and
dependent-origination.
Numerous principles follow from the core beliefs of Nowism. They
include practical guidance for living ones life with a minimum of
unnecessary suffering (of oneself as well as others), further
principles concerning the nature of reality and the mind, and advanced
techniques and principles for reaching greater realizations of the now.
As to the nature of what is taking place right now: from the Nowist
perspective, it is beyond concepts, for all concepts, like everything
else, appear and disappear like visions or mirages, without ever
truly-existing. This corresponds precisely to the Buddhist conception
of emptiness.
The scope of the now is unlimited, however for the uninitiated the
now is usually considered to be limited to the personal present
experience of the individual. Nowist adepts, on the other hand, assert
that the scope of the now may be modified (narrowed or widened) through
various exercises including meditation, prayer, intense physical
activity, art, dance and ritual, drugs, chanting, fasting, etc.
Narrowing the scope of the now is akin to reducing the resolution of
present experience. Widening the scope is akin to increasing the
resolution. A narrower now is a smaller experience, with less
information content. A wider now is a larger experience, with more
information content.
Within the context of realizing that now is all there is, one
explores carefully and discovers that now does not contain anything
findable (such as a self, other, or any entity or fundamental basis for
any objective or subjective phenomenon, let alone any nature that could
be called "nowness" or the now itself).
In short the now is totally devoid of anything findable whatsoever,
although sensory phenomena do continue to appear to arise within it
unceasingly. Such phenomena, and the sensory apparatus, body, brain,
mind and any conception of self that arises in reaction to them, are
all merely illusion-like appearances with no objectively-findable
ultimate, fundamental, or independent existence.
This state is not unlike the analogy of a dream in which oneself and
all the other places and characters are all equally illusory, or of a
completely immersive virtual reality experience that is so convincing
one forgets it isn't real.
Nowism does not assert a divine being or deity, although it also is
not mutually exclusive with the existence of one or more such beings.
However all such beings are considered to be no more real than any
other illusory appearance, such as the appearances of sentient beings,
planets, stars, fundamental particles, etc. Any phenomena -- whether
natural or supernatural -- are equally empty of any independent true
existince. They are all illusory in nature.
However, Nowists do assert that the nature of the now itself, while
completely empty, is in fact the nature of consciousness and what we
call life. It cannot be computed, simulated or modeled in an
information system, program, machine, or representation of any kind.
Any such attempts to represent the now are merely phenomena appearing
within the now, not the now itself. The now is fundamentally
transcendental in this respect.
The now is not limited to any particular region in space or time,
let alone to any individual being's mind. There is no way to assert
there is a single now, or many nows, for no nows are actually findable.
The now is the gap between the past and the future, however, when
searched for it cannot really be found, nor can the past or future be
found. The past is gone, the future hasn't happened yet, and the now is
infinite, constantly changing, and ungraspable. The entire space-time
continuum is in fact within a total all-embracing now, the cosmically
extended now that is beyond the limited personalized scope of now we
presently think we have. Through practice this can be gradually
glimpsed and experienced to greater degrees.
As the now is explored to greater depths, one begins to find that it
has astonishing implications. Simultaneously much of the Zen literature
-- especially the koans -- starts to make sense at last.
While Nowism could be said to be a branch of Buddhism, I would
actually say it might be the other way arond. Nowism is really the most
fundamental, pure, philosophy -- stripped of all cultural baggage and
historical concepts, and retaining only what is absolutely essential.